1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus and an information processing method.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital devices mounting a touch panel have become popular in recent years. In addition to mobile phones, an increasing number of products mounting a touch panel, such as digital cameras and multifunctional printers, have been on the market. Some products enable a user to perform input by handwriting as well as by touching the touch panel with a finger or a pen.
There have been known a growing number of application models, for example, that allows users to write freehand on the panel and search by using a handwriting command or a handwriting input as a key and by combining a handwriting recognition technology.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 08-077295 discusses a search method that enables the handwriting input as a key. In such a search using the handwriting input as the key, handwriting stroke information to be compared with the handwriting input is held at a side to be searched and compared with the input handwriting stroke to perform the search.
The search method performed by using the handwriting input as the key is advantageous in that a user can intuitively input a search key by handwriting. On the other hand, when a plurality of objects to be searched has information including similarly shaped handwriting strokes, an object different from a desired object may be obtained as a search result.
For example, an application is known for searching a shape of a desired icon by using the handwriting input to add an icon to a picture displayed on the touch panel. In this case, a prior art includes icon database as illustrated in FIG. 19, and gives to each icon information including the handwriting stroke having a similar shape thereto.
The prior art performs the search by evaluating a matching level between the input handwriting stroke and the handwriting stroke, which has been previously given to each icon. In a case illustrated in FIG. 19, since the handwriting strokes of icons 2 and 3 have similar shapes to each other, a problem may occur. For example, an icon of a “straw hat” may be searched when an icon of a “Santa Clause's hat” is desired.